I've recently developed an admiration to shooting Portra 400 after learning photography on a DSLR and boy do I love the rendering and range! However, development costs and sending them to FIND or IndieFilmLab is getting pricey. So here I am and I get the gist that Rollei Digibase is the best. But I guess recently Freestylephoto.biz stopped carrying it! Now I'm stuck researching between Tetenal Rapid kits and Kodak bulk chems (Which I have no idea what to buy). I plan on splitting the costs with a friend and we'll be doing 15-20 rolls a time so expirations won't really matter since once we exhaust the batch, it'll just get thrown out.

Can anyone enlighten me whats the best go to kit to go for and or how to build a Kodak arsenal? Cheers

Asking an opinion on APUG can be very dangerous! Welcome.

I'm shocked to see the Rollei chems go. There was so much cheering when they came along only a few years ago. And they were there three weeks ago when I bought some more Unicolor powder.

The Arista liquid chemistry is Unicolor. A look at the directions will show that. Other than the mixing differences, all else is the same.

Some here are rabid about using separate bleach and fix. I think it's overkill worry about something that doesn't seem the rear it's hypo-head in the real world. Yes, professional processing uses separate chemicals, but they have to to maintain the chemistry correctly and that would be difficult in a blix.

I think either Unicolor product or the Tetenal will give you great results. If you scan the negatives, you also have more processing latitude than when wet printing.

As the conversation above about Kodak Starter will show, I don't think anybody has sorted out all of the various Kodak lines of C-41 chemicals and how to use them. And they are usually sold in case lots and then you are shipping liquids.

Thanks so much for the information, Paul. I shall look into the Kodak chems as I don't mind buying in bulk and mixing the ratios. It's sourcing the appropriate ones that I need thats the difficult part as you said.

It's 2013 and this seems to be the state of affairs (in the US) related to C-41 processing kit availability:

- The Rollei-Digibase kit is gone. I called Freestyle -- first they said it was discontinued because of the packaging (Part C went bad quite often); then they said it was discontinued by the manufacturer. I have an inquiry in to the manufacturer (Agfa?).

(As far as I can tell, all of these kits use a blix and not a separate bleach and fix.)

- Trebla has a variety of products, but I'm unfamiliar with these. (Are these their own formulations?)

- Photographer's Formulary doesn't seem to have any C-41 offerings at the moment.

- Kodak Flexicolor chemicals are still available, but packaging and availability is bewildering. Even so, it's sold in large liquid quantities, and seems impractical for occasional and casual home use.

Have I missed or misstated anything? I'm back to looking for a non-powder kit with separate bleach and fix.

That's about it, bvy. An excellent, brief summary compared to the windy one I prepared but never posted two months ago. Same end results as you.

I would presume that the Tetanol liquid kit supplies bleach and fixer separately. Actually, the dry powder kits do, too. But the pH would probably need correction since they chemicals were designed to be mixed together. It's real obvious which is which. Ammonium thiosulfate is the fixer and Sodium (typically) EDTA is the bleach.

Have I missed or misstated anything? I'm back to looking for a non-powder kit with separate bleach and fix.

On posts 71 and 80 on this very thread, kb3lms lists the place where you can get all you need to process color film with bleach and fix separate. It's Kodak, not a kit, but rather each individual component so you can process your color film. Without shipping and tax, it all comes to around $78 US. This is what I'll get once I get started on color again. Hope that helps, bvy.

And do you know, macandal or anyone, how many rolls, more or less, that $78 worth of chemicals will process? I'm trying to figure out if it's worth the effort!

No. Sorry. No clue. But since, in my case, this appears to be the only product that meets my requirements (one of them, like you, that it has bleach and fix separately), I really don't care, so I didn't do the math to see if it was "the right move" to make.

Using Kodak chemistry, one shot except for Bleach, my cost is well under $1/roll for 120 or 35mm. I can do 44-48 rolls per 5L batch of chemistry, using an SSK-4. Hopefully that gives some idea of cost/capacity calculations. It's definitely cheaper and way better quality than basically all commercial labs anywhere near me.